Tour de France faces seven-year win void

AFP, PARIS

Lance Armstrong, left, speaks with team director Johan Bruyneel during training on the Canary Island of Tenerife on Dec. 4, 2008.

Photo: AFP

Tour de France organizers said on Friday that they were against re-attributing Lance Armstrong’s seven wins as the sport’s doping crisis claimed a new victim — Johan Bruyneel, one of the disgraced American’s closest allies.

Armstrong, who denies taking banned substances, has been accused by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) of being at the heart of “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program” ever seen in sport.

The organization announced that Armstrong was guilty of doping violations, raising questions about who would replace him at the top of the Tour podium between 1999 and 2005.

Tour director Christian Prudhomme said he was against re-allocating Armstrong’s victories, describing the revelations contained in the USADA’s 202-page “reasoned decision” and more than 1,000 pages of supporting testimony as “damning.”

“What we want is that there is no winner,” he said in his first comments on the report, calling the period a “lost decade” for the sport, which has been trying to clean up its act in recent years.

Prudhomme’s statement comes even though the International Cycling Union (UCI) has not confirmed USADA’s findings, but could head off further controversy.

Replacing Armstrong as Tour winner has been a source of debate since August, given that the majority of those who finished second or third — and even lower down the field — have subsequently been implicated in doping scandals.

Finding a rider untouched by links to performance-enhancing drug use would have been a difficult — if not impossible — task.

Meanwhile, UCI president Pat McQuaid said it was still studying the USADA dossier against Armstrong, as pressure grew on it to respond to questions about how he managed to evade detection and whether he paid the body hush money for a positive test.

“The legal department has been told that this is a priority, that we get the job done as quickly as possible and certainly within that time frame we will be back,” he said on the sidelines of the Tour of Beijing.

Elsewhere, Armstrong’s former manager Bruyneel left his current team RadioShack on Friday, amid reports in Belgium that rider Fabian Cancellara was reviewing his future with the outfit because Bruyneel was cited so often in the USADA report.

“From this day on, Johan Bruyneel will no longer act in the position of general manager of cycling team RadioShack Nissan Trek,” a statement said on the team’s Web site.

“The decision published by the USADA included a number of testimonies as a result of their investigation. In light of these testimonies, both parties feel it is necessary to make this decision since Johan Bruyneel can no longer direct the team in an efficient and comfortable way,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, British cyclist David Millar, who served a two-year doping ban, but is now on the athletes’ committee of the World Anti-Doping Agency, called for UCI honorary president Hein Verbruggen to resign in the wake of the Armstrong scandal.

The Dutchman was president of the UCI as Armstrong powered his way into the history books and last year said he was convinced the racer had “never, never, never” doped.

Millar told Britain’s domestic Press Association that the UCI had to take some responsibility, as it was “obvious” from blood data and medical reports that doping was part of cycling’s culture, particularly in big races.